Dr. Datonye Dennis Alasia is a Physician at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Southern Nigeria. Dr. Alasia served as the EditorinChief to the Nigerian Journal of Medicine from September 2004 to January 2007. He currently serves as an editorial adviser to the Nigerian Journal of Medicineand is involved in various initiatives to promote online journal publishing and open access in Nigeria.

The impact of the open access movement on medical based scholarly publishing in Nigeria

Alasia Datonye Dennis

Abstract

The open access movement and its initiatives -- which advocate a shift from predominant print-based publication to electronic and Internet sources -- is expected to improve the global distribution of scholarly research and impact positively on the current state of scholarly publications in the developing world. This review examines the current state of medical journals in Nigeria and assesses the impact of the open access movement and its initiatives on medical scholarly publishing in Nigeria. The resulting appraisal shows that open access initiatives have impacted positively on medical scholarly publishing in Nigeria, with the African Journals Online and the African Index Medicus projects being the most significant influences. There are enormous prospects for further developing medical scholarly publishing in Nigeria using open access initiatives; these opportunities should be exploited and developed.